Cosatu-affiliated unions in the Post Office and Gauteng metro police have vowed to directly and indirectly help motorists against e-tolling.
Post Office workers who are members of the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) are already on a go-slow. However, they have been urged to work even more slowly when dealing with summonses from the SA National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral).
“They must work extremely slowly when dealing with those Sanral letters. If they have to sort out 100 a day, they should make it one a day,” CWU Gauteng secretary Aubrey Tshabalala said.
Workers should work “slower than a snail” so that those people opposing the system did not receive the summons.
“We want the system to completely collapse. We are very disappointed that after Cosatu marches and engagements the system still continued.”
Tshabalala said the campaign against the system would be intensified in January.
CWU workers in the Post Office are on a go-slow, demanding a relocation allowance, 10 percent salary increase, housing subsidy, medical aid post retirement benefits, and the removal of capping of medical aid.
Traffic officers in Ekurhuleni and Johannesburg who are members of the SA Municipal Workers' Union (Samwu) were also on an unofficial go-slow.
The union distanced itself from the unofficial go slow but confirmed that officers had been complaining they were forced to desert their official duties due to the massive traffic on alternatives routes to the e-tolled highways.
Samwu Gauteng legal officer Jack Mokalapa said the union had received complaints from members that it had been an “absolute disaster” on those roads in the morning as motorists avoided tolled highways.
“They are creating extra work for our officers and they can no longer attend to other emergencies. It's an operational disaster and there is not enough manpower.”
Mokalapa said Samwu, through the Congress of SA Trade Unions, would continue attempts to force government to scrap the system.
“We are going to intensify our efforts to put pressure on government so that the system is not even implemented in other provinces.” -Sapa